


A Homecoming

by fluffernutter8



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, kinda OOC Jack Thompson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 14:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11106732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: We're neighbors and we both hate the guy next door, so instead of wasting our time sabotaging him individually, let's team up and make his life hellAU





	A Homecoming

Steve’s never lived alone before. He doesn’t remember his dad, but his ma’s house was always warm enough and good-smelling, no matter how much she broke her back to make it that way and how many times they had to move. Army barracks weren’t nearly as cozy, but he was there with Bucky and he had the guys and it was good enough.

Now he’s back in Brooklyn, renting by himself, trying to figure out exactly what marketable skills he has in a situation that doesn’t involve covert operations. His criteria for a place to live, despite the captain’s salary in his bank account, had been fairly simple: not too expensive, close enough to work and the hospital, air conditioning. He hadn’t realized it would that hard to find a place that fit.

He certainly didn’t think the place he found would be this bad.

The building itself is nice enough: the hallways are clean, there’s laundry in the basement, and he has a balcony big enough for a chair and even his body at times when he’s feeling particularly narrow.

The first night, he thinks that the loud party next door must be a one-off. When he comes home the next afternoon, he excuses the smell of severely burned food as an accident. The music starts again at 8:30 that night and, if Steve’s wide-open eyes don’t deceive him, shuts off at 2:47 in the morning.

The third night, Steve gets home and waits, makes dinner and waits, sends a couple of emails and waits, and is just picking up a book when he hears a storm of footsteps and the hum of the speakers.

Although he’s been anticipating just this situation, everything inside Steve revolts. He’s up, across his living room, and opening the door before the blaring music even hits the first chorus. But somehow, he hasn’t been fast enough.

The person already in the hall is female with dark brown hair. When she pounds on the door, it reminds him of a few times in seedier buildings as a kid, like it should be followed by “Open up, this is the police.” But instead the woman bellows, “Turn down the bloody music, or I’ll be filing a noise complaint with the building manager.”

She does sound fairly intimidating, at least to Steve. Then again, Steve’s got manners, and a conscience. He’s not sure about the neighbors. Steve can’t see exactly who opens the door, but he sounds young and male, and certainly rude, as he shouts back, “I am the building manager. Consider your complaint filed.” His friends cheer and whoop approvingly, and the door slams again.

“Jesus.” Steve mutters to himself. “What an asshole.”

He thought the bass thump, although slightly muffled, would conceal his voice. Apparently not. The woman looks up. By this point, Steve’s pieced together that she was the person he saw finishing moving in across the hall just as he showed up to start. He hasn’t really seen her until now. Apparently, she’s stunning and intimidating as hell. So Steve does the obvious, idiot thing: gives a jerky nod and slams the door.

* * *

The next day when Steve comes home, still berating himself for his inability to be a functional human adult, there’s a note under his door.

All it says is, _Revenge?_ but Steve knows exactly who it’s from. The next morning, he slips a note back under her door before he leaves. _Hell yes._

* * *

She comes over to his place that night. Although he knows that he unpacked carefully and he doesn’t have that much stuff in the first place, he scans the room before letting her in.

“I’ve just started law school,” she tells him once she’s introduced herself as Peggy Carter and settled on his couch, beverage in hand. (He’d thought about picking up a bottle of wine, but he knows nothing about red versus white or good vintages. She has seltzer instead.) “I moved out of university housing hoping for my own quiet space to work.”

“I just want to get some sleep.” Though he’s a little out of practice, Steve’s used to late nights and erratic schedules. But there were bullets involved then, and his body’s tired. He just wants to rest in his new place.

Peggy takes a sip of her drink, and he has to remind himself not to stare at the stunning curve of her, overwhelming even in a simple sweater and jeans. He shakes his head rapidly. “And idea if he was telling the truth last night?”

“About being the building manager? Unfortunately I think he was.” Peggy crinkles her mouth. “I spoke to one of the women downstairs, Mrs. Tyler. Between trying to load me down with baked goods, she told me that he took over about six months ago, and doesn’t seem to feel any sort of responsibility toward the building. His preferred method of dealing with his terrible behavior has been just to let people break their leases and then find new tenants. If anyone threatens to go to the management company or the police, he threatens eviction in return. Obviously he knows just how devastating an effect an eviction can have on future housing prospects. The residents who have been forced to stay or are best able to put up with the situation are mostly elderly. Mrs. Tyler didn’t have particularly sharp senses at two in the afternoon, and she apparently takes her hearing aids out at night. But even if she’s able to withstand the musical barrage better than we can, her apartment will just fall into further disrepair if none of her work requests are completed. She had to fill the kettle in the bathroom sink; her kitchen drain’s been stopped up for weeks, and no one’s done a thing about it.”

Somehow, though he listened to everything she said, Steve thinks he blacked out for a few seconds. Probably the rage. Definitely the rage, he decides when he finds that he has fists pressing into his thighs. Forcing people to take an awful living situation or no living situation at all. Taking advantage of the elderly. Christ.

“I hope you have at least the beginning of a plan,” Steve grits, satisfying himself with any level of inside voice now that calm has fully escaped him. “Because otherwise I’m going to have to move on to the punching him in the face strategy.”

Although he’d never expect her to, Peggy laughs quietly, a lovely, fizzy laugh. She pats his arm. “We’ll save that for plan B.”

* * *

Peggy Carter, it turns out, has her own set of lockpicks and uses them expertly.

“Aren’t you going to be a lawyer?” Steve asks out of the corner of his mouth, trying to figure out the best way to pull off ‘casually hanging around in the hallway while also standing lookout.’

“Of course. Studying the law is the best way to learn how to work around it,” she says breezily as the lock clicks. She stands up, turns the knob, and gestures him in. “Although I will point out that I’m not yet an officer of the court.”

They’ve discussed exactly what their roles will be. Peggy goes right to the bedroom and bathroom. Steve does the kitchen and living room. They go back to Peggy’s for Chinese takeout when they’re done.

* * *

The music starts up predictably again that night. Then it shuts down again a half hour later. Steve can hear Thompson apologizing, and several voices criticizing him even as they walk away down the stairs for storing sour milk, chicken broth, and something that was potentially a urine sample in liquor bottles.

“But I don’t!” Thompson calls after them. “I have no idea how that stuff got in there.” When no one responds, he goes back into his apartment alone and slams the door. Steve can practically feel him stewing through the walls.

He rolls over and grins to himself. A good night all around.

* * *

“What exactly do you do for work?” Peggy asks, leaning against the doorway and looking up at Steve balances on a chair, reaching up toward Mrs. Tyler’s ceiling.

“I don’t seem like an expert plumber?” Steve asks wryly. He and Peggy have just finished using YouTube videos to fix the sink. His shirt is still wet and there’s something under his nails that he’d rather not think about. “Or electrician?” he adds as he ends up juggling the things he’s holding, finally managing to separate a pair of batteries and stick them in his pocket.

“Well, no one’s been injured so far,” Peggy points out, snapping a quick picture of him before tucking her phone away. “But no, I wouldn’t say these seem to be your chief skills.”

“My real job doesn’t exactly use my chief skills either. I work at a coffee shop. Not very good at it, but it’s what happens when all you have on your resume is teenage retail jobs and a ten year gap that just says ‘Army.’” He focuses on his job, working the screwdriver carefully. He's gotten used to reeling off the facts, but an unexpected embarrassment comes with talking about it with Peggy. “I've been thinking about going back to school, but I don't know what for yet, so I don't want to waste anyone's time or money.”

Finally there's nothing to fiddle with anymore. He climbs off the chair, returns it to its place, and makes himself turn to face Peggy.

“Perhaps you need a hobby,” is all she says, without any of the awkwardness of thanking him for his service or speaking with pity.

“I do have hobbies,” Steve says, feeling his lungs expand. “I paint. I volunteer at a boxing gym close to where I grew up. Tried to get a job there, but all the same guys who trained me as a kid are still around, refusing to retire.”

Peggy starts to respond, but quiets politely as Mrs. Tyler shuffles down the hallway toward them. “Oh, Steven, there was no need to do that. You’ve already done enough today.”

“It’s no trouble at all, ma’am,” Steve says, quickly explaining that the new smoke detector will alert her with flashing lights rather than sound. (He’d gotten nervous after Peggy had told him that Mrs. Tyler took out her hearing aids at night; turned out that visual smoke detectors were pretty readily available.)

Mrs. Tyler flutters around a bit longer, offering them more tea, more cake, additional compliments, and even more tea, before they take their leave.

Out in the hall, Steve’s almost forgotten the conversation they’d been having, until Peggy says, “I think you can safely add charming old ladies to your list of hobbies.”

“I don’t think that counts,” Steve says, but he laughs anyway.

A creaky pacing sounds above them, and they both look up at the ceiling. The sound of Thompson’s footsteps is more easily audible out here, but they have to just imagine his frantic muttering. Peggy takes out her phone, ponders for a moment, then adds a cricket chirping to the running water and buzzing fly sounds they’ve already been pestering him with. Steve, who hadn’t even realized that the set of small sound effect devices they’d left in his apartment could be controlled by an app, looks on in admiration as she very carefully times the new sound for maximum irritation. They listen hard, and although they miss the chirp itself, they do hear Thompson throw something.

Steve grins over at Peggy. “Besides,” he says, “I think I’m full up on hobbies for now.”

* * *

“West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish?”

“1937 decision,” Peggy starts, “that determined that...it’s acceptable for the government to enforce minimum wage legislation, and that it’s a valid regulation of the freedom of contract that does not impede business.”

“Nice.” Steve lets her dig through the Hershey’s assortment while he examines the back of the flash card. “Overturned?”

Through a bite she answers, “Adkins v. Children's Hospital. God, this is shit chocolate,” and then, before he can even ask, adds, “And it’s generally thought of as the ending point for the Lochner era of pro-business Supreme Court decisions. Thankfully.”

He roots through the bag to find one of the Peanut Butter Cups that have avoided her so far. He finally pulls one out and tosses it to her before contenting himself with some classic milk chocolate as he turns to the next card.

“Hang on,” Peggy says, reaching over onto the coffee table to grab her cell and answer it on speakerphone. “Hello?”

“Congratulate me,” Angie says triumphantly. Although Steve can tell by the windy sound that she’s already outside and walking, he still hears the music of the club in the background so she must have just left. “I just gave the performance of a lifetime. They’re already naming a theater after me, I can tell.”

“Excellent, Angie,” Peggy says as she and Steve quietly high five. “I only wish I could have seen his face.”

“Got you taken care of, English. We got all the pictures and video you could want. And you were right: the pregnancy test added just the right touch. Course, I had to get my sister Lina to pee on the stick, and then she started crying about why does everyone always assume she’s pregnant, and obviously you don’t want to tell her it’s because she always seems to be–”

“How’d the rest of the girls do, Angie?” Steve asks.

Angie continues enthusiastically despite the interruption. “Oh, everyone was great! I had fake pregnancy– and I really sold the ‘And it’s _yours!_ ’ let me tell you– but Allison got _very_ detailed about the night they spent together and how her grandma died the next day and it was all his fault, and Marnie did a great bit about how she met him right there in that club and he didn’t even remember her name. She even splashed her drink on him in the end. It was a vodka cranberry, and it didn’t look so great with whatever’s happening with his hair.”

Steve settles back, grinning to himself. The bleach in the shampoo bottle was his idea. Peggy pokes him with a “don’t get cocky” elbow. She’s right; the whole rest of the plan’s been all her.

“Anyway, the girls wanted to know if you have anyone else we can do this to. It was a great time. Much better than the regular ‘pretend you’re sitting on an invisible bench’ stuff our improv teacher usually has us do.”

The scheming sort of brilliance that Steve’s come to recognize washes over Peggy’s face. “We’ll be sure to give you a call if we have any other need for your services.”

“Make sure to do that. Oh, my train’s here. I’ll talk to you later!” Angie hangs up, and they sit on the couch alternating smiling around Peggy’s modest living room and toward each other. Finally, Peggy takes the flashcards out of Steve’s hands.

“I’ve studied enough, and unless you’ve been able to do it behind my back, you still haven’t seen Hot Fuzz.”

Steve knows he should take the opportunity to sleep while Thompson is nursing his wounds from the evening. “I’ll make popcorn,” he says instead.

* * *

Peggy’s exams hit them both harder than expected. She stops even asking for his help reviewing, opting for study groups and long sessions at the library. By the end of the week, Steve realizes that they’ve barely had a chance to exchange smiles over the past few days.

The building is quiet, the residents and their unfortunate landlord all settled for the moment. Steve tries to take advantage of the peace, drafting a sketch of a new painting for a series he’s doing. At around 7:30, he takes a break to stretch and pee and find something to eat. Standing by his kitchen counter, spreading peanut butter on bread, he suddenly realizes that although he saw Peggy ducking into her apartment as he came up the stairs, he hasn’t heard her come out to get anything to eat since. Considering the state of her cupboard when he last saw it and her general avoidance of cooking, he suspects that she’s just forgotten to eat. He sighs and picks up his phone.

He’s settled back at his sketchpad again when someone knocks on his door.

“It was probably good that the delivery man specified that it was chicken and pesto, or I would have assumed Thompson was finally starting to get back at us.” Peggy has the box in both hands as she stands in his doorway.

“I don’t think a little fake pizza order is exactly getting us back,” Steve counters, shrugging awkwardly. “But I’m glad you have the world’s strangest favorite pizza to help you make sure.”

“You know,” she says, “I’ve decided I deserve a little break. Want to come have a piece with me? We can subscribe Thompson to a few more irritating websites.”

Steve glances over at his drawing, still in progress. He follows her out of his apartment and across the hall.

(Annoyingly and obviously, Peggy’s right; the pizza is delicious. They spend most of their time on that, though, eating through the pie and talking about best pizza places, and favorite cities they’ve traveled to, and the merits of hiking. Thompson barely gets subscribed to half a dozen new spam listings.)

* * *

Steve wakes himself up shaking. When the most severe trembling has stopped, he realizes that he’s fallen asleep on Peggy’s sofa. Her place was just the slightest bit farther from Thompson’s but when his parties had taken on a sense of increasing desperation for normalcy, the little distance made a difference.

Peggy stands above him, hand still on the switch from turning on the lamp. “I didn’t want to startle you,” she says simply.

“No.” His voice comes out just as roughly as he’d feared. He’s sweaty. He knows he’s been crying. “It’s okay.”

Peggy tucks herself into the armchair, just the right amount of distance away. “Does this happen frequently?”

Steve looks away. “Not so much anymore. But sometimes.”

She gives a quiet, understanding hum. “I think I’ll have a cup of tea,” she says, standing.

He doesn’t watch the familiar motions of her in the kitchen. Just around the time the water’s boiled, he says, “My best friend. His name is Bucky. We were over there together.”

She pours the water into their mugs. “I’m sorry.” It sounds so much more than rote from her.

“No it’s– He’s alive. He’s here in the city. But he– We were patrolling, and there was an ambush. He pushed me down.” Steve swallows. He isn’t sure she can even hear him anymore. “He lost an arm because of me.”

He reaches out unthinkingly as she passes him the Mickey Mouse mug that’s somehow become his. She lowers herself beside him while he sips his tea. “Not because of you,” she says, very firmly. “I’ve no doubt he has no regrets, just as I know that if the positions had been reversed, you would have done the exact same for him.” One hand still wrapped around her cup, she curls the fingers of the other through his, resting their clasped hands on her lap. “And I’m still sorry. For both of you”

He’s woken up from a lot of nightmares. Somehow this– the tea, Peggy’s close hand, the worn afghan from her grandmother resting on his lap– is the only thing that’s been able to lure him back to sleep.

* * *

By the time the elevator breaks, Steve isn’t sure if Thompson refuses to have it fixed because of his characteristic callousness, his newfound exhaustion, or his assumption that one of his tenants is screwing with him and corresponding lack of concern about collective punishment.

Whatever it is, Steve’s the one who ends up calling a repair service, waiting for them, and listening through an explanation of the problem that goes totally over his head. Luckily, Mr. Washington shows up around then with several bags of groceries, so Steve tells the guy to just go ahead and make the fix while he helps an old man and his twenty cans of on-sale vegetable soup up the stairs.

Once he’s gotten the soup packed away in the cabinet, had a spirited discussion with Mr. Washington about the Mets’ prospects this year, gone back down the stairs, and paid the repair guy, he’s pretty ready to lock himself in for the night.

But then the front door opens, and Peggy walks in. Even from across the lobby, Steve can see that something is wrong.

“My class being canceled and the elevator being fixed are the only good things that have happened all day,” she rasps out when he asks what the problem is. Although she smiles at him, she looks, as his mother would say, peaked. The weather’s warming but she’s wrapped up in a coat, and he spots a half used pack of tissues poking out of her bag.

She ends up leaning against him as they take the elevator up, although she usually takes the stairs and stands quite contently on her own. By the time she gets onto the couch, she’s really fading. While she contends with her shoes, he sorts through the medicine cabinet, forcing her to take a few different pills with a glass of water, and making a mental note about what he’ll have to pick up at the drugstore.

Peggy's shelves are filled mostly with law books and paperback mysteries, but luckily he has the library’s ebook app on his phone, so he checks out a couple of things and reads while she sleeps. He makes tea and toast for when she wakes up, and she chats with him a little, exhausted but still wonderfully herself, charming and brilliant and fiery.

She manages a quick shower on her own while he desperately tries to distract himself from thinking through the details of that by cleaning up her small kitchen area, and falls into her bed without a chance to even say goodnight. He plugs in her phone and switches off her alarm before he leaves; she can get pissed at him if she wants.

She apparently does want. He spends the mid-morning rush ignoring furious texts reminding him of exactly what he’s made her miss, mostly accompanied by images of deeply involved syllabi and hefty, heavily highlighted law textbooks. He does notice, however, that she seems to have chosen to write the day off completely and stay home.

“Get out of here,” his manager, Natasha, eventually tells him, twenty minutes before close. “You look so sappy, you’re going to make the customers sick.”

He can’t really find it in him to protest.

He knocks on Peggy’s door before he’s even dropped his things off, and he holds out the to-go cup as soon as she opens up.

“I did a foam smiley face,” he offers. “But I don’t think it traveled too well.”

She takes a sip, and although he can see that the coffee hides a smile, he feels the need to apologize anyway. “I’m sorry that I overstepped. You know how to take care of yourself. I shouldn’t have assumed.”

She takes another sip, taps a finger against the cup. “Well, taking the day off wasn’t entirely unpleasant.” He brings his eyes up to meet hers again. She wrinkles an eyebrow at him, then moves aside. “Just come in already. I’m actually a fairly deft hand at toasted cheese, and I spent the day coming up with a way to solve the vents issue, and I’m fairly certain I’m not contagious.”

Some of these things are correct.

* * *

“You’ve gotta ask her out,” Bucky says, clenching and unclenching his fist around Steve’s hand. Either he’s getting better at controlling the prosthetic, or Steve’s really distracted.

Or both. Which would be some sort of nice.

“I can’t just do that, Buck. She’s gonna be a big time lawyer, and I’m just an ex-army nobody barista.”

“Hey,” Bucky barks, speaking over his shoulder as he moves away from Steve towards the weights area. “You’re Captain Ex-Army Nobody, and from what I’ve heard, you’re actually shaping up to be a half decent barista.”

Steve rolls his eyes, trying not to do it affectionately. “Yeah, I’ll just start wearing my dress greens everywhere. I’m sure that’ll impress her.”

“Hey, if your mug hasn’t chased her away by now, I think you’re doing pretty good.”

“Please tell me you’re not still talking about this woman,” Sam says, coming in from the hall, arm full of files. Steve glares. How can he even tell that just from walking by? “She’s been the only thing on your mind for months now. If you mention her during Roses and Thorns at next week’s group, I’m asking her out myself.”

“For him or for you?” Bucky asks.

Sam winks. “We’ll see.”

Steve thinks about the conversation all the way back home from the VA. He’s still thinking about it as he greets Mrs. Tyler by the mailboxes.

“Oh Steven,” she says, and he snaps into focus. Her hands are trembling. “Have you gotten the news?”

“No, ma’am.”

She shows him her copy of the letter declaring Thompson’s decision on a hundred dollar per month rent increase to be used for “maintenance costs.”

Steve’s eyes blur for a moment. His heart pounds. His jaw sets.

“I’ll take care of this,” he promises Mrs. Tyler, and takes the stairs three at a time.

 _Time for plan B_ , he texts Peggy as he goes, even though he knows she has Constitutional Law now.

 _Which plan B? The one that involves punching?_ she texts quickly anyway

He hits their floor. _It’s okay. If I get in trouble, I’ll just get a lawyer._

Her answer comes back so quickly that he suspects that she had already typed it out, anticipating his response. _I’m your lawyer, you dickhead! At least wait until I’m out of class._

He ignores her in favor of pounding a fist on Thompson’s door. Though it’s the middle of the afternoon, the man answers.

“Yeah?” Steve hasn’t seen him directly in months. He looks rather worse for the wear. He’s shaved his bleached head and it is returning patchily. He looks vaguely haunted, exhausted in his bones.

Steve doesn’t let that deter him. Raising the rent, the only good thing about this place, on a bunch of old folks who he must know can’t afford it? Steve puts an extra something special into it as he slaps a thick file folder against Thompson’s chest. “You’ve been served, asshole.” He turns around to go back to his apartment.

“What the hell?” Thompson calls after him. “You’re just the guy next door. This isn’t even anything official.”

“Not yet,” Steve says, turning back toward him, temper clinging. “But if you actually read it, you’ll find a pretty well documented case of neglect and breach of contract. All those pictures in there? There’s video to go with them. Get out of here before I call the cops and then have you fired. And look for another line of work.”

He starts to walk away again, mouth relaxing into something close to a smile for the first time that afternoon as he hears Thompson paging through the folder. His progressively frantic examination must be messing up Peggy’s careful organization, but Steve can’t bring himself to worry about it.

As he gets to his door, Thompson calls out again. “Hey. What was even the point of all the other stuff if you were just going to do it this way all along? I know all of that’s been you all along.” Although it seems he’s trying to sound combative, mostly he sounds tired. He must have gotten to the pictures of Angie and her improv group finding him at the club during the time he was supposed to be taking care of the blown fuse on the third floor. Steve’d been the one fixing the fuse, and he’d be tired too, thinking about all those women and their accusations.

Steve almost wants to put a hand on his shoulder. He suspects, however, that touching Thompson is not a good move. “One day, maybe you’ll understand. And if you’re lucky, when that day comes, the people you’ll need to apologize to will still be here.”

As he closes the door to his apartment, he hears Thompson still paging through as if looking for loopholes. Apparently that day won’t be anytime soon.

* * *

Peggy turns up sooner than he’d expected. She’d probably pulled some fairly risky commuter moves to get here so fast.

“A very sullen man’s just informed me that there will be a vacancy next door by Friday,” she says as she comes into his place. “Do you really think that letting him leave is the smartest course of action?”

Steve shrugs. “I’ll keep an eye on him. If he tries to pull something like this again, I think we can find a way to conveniently haunt him.”

“We?” She raises an eyebrow. “If I remember correctly, your contribution to the planning mostly involved threatening his hairline. And you weren’t even considerate enough to let me watch everything come to fruition.”

“I was giving you plausible deniability,” he offers, but when she looks unimpressed he concedes. “I’m sorry about that.” He tries to smile winningly. It likely ends up just looking guilty.

She examines him for a long moment. “I suppose it’s enough that I’m not bailing you out of an assault charge,” she says grudgingly.

“Probably the metric you want to look at,” he agrees. They’ve been standing in the middle of the living room and he glances around quickly. “Want to sit? I picked up the Pride and Prejudice miniseries you were talking about, and I was thinking about actually cooking tonight. It’s no problem if you want to stay.” He hopes that it doesn’t come out as _please, stay_ , the way he thinks it does.

“Actually.” She takes a step back toward the door. “I think that you might want an early night.”

“What? Why?”

She shrugs, blank-faced. “You never know what tomorrow might bring.”

* * *

The next afternoon, Steve’s just about to take his lunch break when his phone displays an unfamiliar number with a New York area code.

“They’re gonna stop giving ‘em to you, ya know,” he says. Bucky has a terrible habit of losing phones and calling Steve from random new numbers.

The voice on the other end, which definitely does not belong to Bucky, asks, “Is this Steve Rogers?”

“It is,” Steve says, pressing his fist against his forehead. While hopeful that the man on the phone might instantly forget how he’d answered, he’s mostly just grateful that he and Natasha can’t take a lunch break at the same time.

“There’s a matter I need to discuss, and I hear that you’re the person to do it with.” And he explains exactly what he means.

* * *

Steve knocks on Peggy’s door later than usual that night. She answers anyway, her hair up in a thick ponytail and a pair of her heavy socks on her feet because they’re always cold.

“How was your day?” she asks casually as he comes in.

“Did you do this?” he asks.

She drops the act. “Every person in the building recommended you. I just passed on your name to the management company.”

“I didn’t even have to interview,” he says, not entirely sure which one of them he’s talking to. “They just asked if I wanted to do it.”

“You’ve been taking care of everything for months now,” she points out. She’s put on her lawyer voice. “We were out a property manager. You’re responsible, friendly, and underemployed– the natural choice.”

For some reason, he still wants to argue, but he stops himself. “Thank you,” he tells her instead, because he means that too. It should have been the first thing he said; he’s been thinking about it since he got the call this morning, along with something else. He scrubs a hand along the back of his neck, takes a deep breath. “You know, I hear law school is pretty expensive.”

She gives him a strange, sideways glance. “Yes?”

“And I get a pass on rent, with the new job.” He flicks his eyes up at her, hoping she’ll get what he’s saying. Apparently not. “So, if you wanted to save on rent, you could...stay with me.”

He experiences a moment of the most awful silence. Then she starts to laugh. He smiles automatically; he knows that she’s laughing at him, but the sound reaches something deep and warm in his chest. When she finally catches her breath, she says, ”Aren’t you doing things out of order?”

“I know,” he says. “But I thought–” He cuts himself off. Because the truth was that he hadn’t really thought about it beyond the fact that he loved the idea of having her around all the time, of the two of them talking and laughing and living without doors in the way.

“Perhaps we should actually have a date first,” she suggests.

“Yes. Please.” He flicks through his mental calendar of her schedule. “Sunday night?”

“Sounds perfect.” Her warm smile turning mischievous, she adds, “You can pick me up at my apartment.”

Steve’s face flames. “Right. If we could just forget that, I’d appreciate it.”

“Not a chance.” She leans up and kisses his cheek. Though they’re the only one’s there, she says very softly, “Ask me again in six months.”

* * *

He does. She says yes.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by prompts from [here](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).


End file.
